Team Toughskin

My lovely wife sez to me last Sunday morning, “dude, what are you doing with the kids this summer? Is Milo going to skateboard camp? You mentioned snowboard camp? What about BMX, are you going to get him into that?” My head was spinning but I was like BMX???
We had gone to this track up north a year ago but didn’t have little guy race cause we had to much other shit going with swimming, soccer, basketball and baseball but we checked the track out and Milo had shown some interest in getting radibonzical on a bike.
Anyway, I get on the ABA website for track directories and race schedules to see what’s up. They have a practice going on that morning up north and there was a race day at another track down by the airport. I went down to the basement and started to get the little guys bikes ready so incase they wanted to take some hot laps at the track they could. Instead of buying each of them a pad set for the bikes I went to the plumbing store and spent a buck fifty on some foam and duct taped it to their cross bars and what not. Took the reflectors off the wheels, pulled the chain guards off too. Milo’s got a 16” pit bike that he moto’s everywhere and Mac has a 8” little guy bike. Both of these shit boxes have coaster brakes and all. By all means, they are NOT BMX race bikes.
We leave the house that morning and the wife says, “Whatever you do, don’t let Milo race today. I don’t want him to get a bad taste in his mouth about this cause you forced him into it.” “Sure honey” and out the door we went. I figure we’ll check out the race and let the little guys watch, then head over to the skate park that’s right next to this track, kill 2 birds with one stone so to speak. We find the track and there’s a ton of little guys ripping around the track. We cruise around and watch a bunch of practices and all then Milo goes, “Dad, I want to race.” I’m like “Race? How about some practice laps and we’ll figure out if you like this and all.” “NO Dad, I want to race today.”
I walk over to sign ups and the lady gets us all signed up, gives him a number plate for the day made out of the paper dish that the hot dogs are served from, then lets him borrow a full face helmet. Milo had shown up in jeans, a Sponge Bob shirt and his TSG skateboard helmet. Not rad attire by any means. Team Toughskin.
We do a bunch of practices and he’s having a blast. The only thing he knows about BMX racing is what I tell him. They have 3 races to vie for the trophies. 6 kids are in Milo’s age class, 6 novice. Every kid on the line has a 21” race bike, race leathers and the gear. Milo’s running a coaster brake, 16” pit bike and a borrowed full face helmet. Little guy is out gunned as far as equipment goes and in the young age classes, the arrow is sometimes more important than the archer.
Moto 1, little guy pulls in with a solid 4^th place. Got a little squeeze down the first straight away and backed off. He’s stoked though. Moto 2, full holeshot start to finish. Team Toughskin pulled a first. The announcer is going nuts and people are rooting the under dog on. Its funny how people took notice of the 6 year old novice class, because this kid looking like he came out of the trailer park just put on a clinic. Moto 3, he holeshots again to the first corner and gets passed by two kids in the other corners. But shit, a 4, 1 and 3 for his first day racing, I was stoked and when he got that 3^rd place trophy, I knew he was hooked. “Screw team sports, this is the shit!” is the look he had.
This past weekend, we show back up at the track, same bike and same outfit, except I changed his gearing out a little. Went from an 18 tooth back cog to a 16. Gave the meat a little more to pedal into so he didn’t spin out. The vid below is what happened the rest of the day. Total destruction.